Australian Catholic University streamlines processes and increases researcher engagement

Challenge

Australian Catholic University (ACU) first opened in 1991 with a commitment to delivering excellence in education and research. Ranked in the top 2% of all universities, and as one of the world’s top 10 Catholic universities, ACU operates eight campuses in Australia and one in Rome, Italy.

ACU’s researchers are focused on finding new ways of addressing critical issues through positive solutions by collaborating and partnering with industries, other universities, governments, and communities. Widely cited as experts in their fields, ACU’s researcher success rate in acquiring Australian Research Council (ARC) funding is higher than average, and many researchers have won prestigious international research awards.

The university’s repository is a showcase of the institution’s research, but as Stephanie McGlinchey, Manager, Research Services Library explained, “Interoperability was a major problem with our system—we could push out content to other systems, but the ability to upload content from the Research Management System (RMS) was not available.” Also, they “were unable to connect with ORCID and verify outputs or affiliations with a researcher.”

Explaining the need to change repository platforms, McGlinchey said, “While our previous platform was highly discoverable and had a user-friendly dashboard, we were looking for a system that was less standalone, and that could integrate with other institutional systems, such as our HR system and Research Management System (RMS). We also required a system that could mint DOIs, as well as integrate with ORCID.”

“We were having to download content from our RMS to manually upload into our previous system. The previous system’s structure also made it more challenging to reclassify content—it was quite siloed in containers, and we needed more control over our content.”

Solution

ACU decided to research a potential replacement for their repository system. They had many requirements on their wish list when reviewing solutions, with particular focus on the following areas:

• The ability to integrate different versions of an output in a single record
• More granularity in being able to classify an output as open, closed, or mediated
• A flexible database which allowed them to make modifications easily across a set of records, such as preferred name, or publisher, or to simply transfer an institution’s affiliation from one faculty to another
• A repository that could “talk” to other academic and institutional systems

The solution ACU chose was Cayuse Repository, powered by Haplo. “This was the first time that our project team had integrated with other university systems. The Cayuse/Haplo team helped every step of the way, meeting weekly with us to flesh out the implementation, despite our own internal challenges with our cross-functional team’s availability.”

McGlinchey found Cayuse Repository easy to adapt to ACU’s needs. “I think the process of customization was pretty easy, as most of our needs were met with simple configurations in the product. Many of the customization conversations were along the lines of “Can we do this?” and the vast majority of the time the answer was “Yes.” A few of our requests took a bit more additional work, but that was always communicated to us. For the user interface look and feel, we provided our branding guidelines which were then used to great effect.”

Results

ACU’s main objective was to eliminate barriers to self-deposit through seamless integration into the wider institutional infrastructure. McGlinchey saw the improvements immediately. “Since deployment, we have seen more requests for content, and researchers have been able to self-submit research or request modifications to records easily. Having single sign-on has meant it is easier for people to log in and access their content. We have had a lot of positive feedback from our library staff, who helped us with user testing.”

According to McGlinchey, “The new system will allow us to check in new verified content more easily into the platform, and with a shorter turnaround time as well. This saves us time and enables us to focus on other tasks related to encouraging our researchers to upload their accepted manuscripts and data sets. The database structure, where everything is linked, is really impressive and has eliminated data silos.”

Visit ACU’s Cayuse Repository (powered by Haplo) at https://acuresearchbank.acu.edu.au/